


Come Morning Light

by arabmorgan



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2021-01-23 00:14:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21310948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arabmorgan/pseuds/arabmorgan
Summary: In which Sandor wakes up to find a stranger in his bed and spends a lot of time wondering how in the seven hells this happened.
Relationships: Sandor Clegane/Sansa Stark
Comments: 21
Kudos: 221





	Come Morning Light

If there was one thing Sandor was used to after a lifetime of menial jobs, it was waking up early. Every morning come rain or shine, consciousness would steal over him with the approaching dawn – even with, it appeared, the bloody worst hangover he had ever had the displeasure of suffering in a very, very long time.

With a groan, he rolled over onto his back, only to find himself rolling right onto _another person_. There was a damned woman in his bloody _bed_, one who squeaked in surprise and hurriedly scooted out from under him. The realisation was slow in coming despite the very physical evidence right beside him – the entire situation simply refused to make any sense to his muddled mind.

Women didn’t go home with him. It just – wasn’t a thing that happened. She must have been stinking drunk – much like he had been, considering he didn’t remember reaching home in the first place, much less having anyone else along for the ride.

Gods, now he would have to deal with her screaming when she caught sight of his face in the daylight, on top of his already spectacular migraine.

Why _had _he drunk so much?

Flinging an arm over his eyes, he sighed and tried to think through the pain.

There had been news. News about Gregor, of course.

It seemed like everything came back to his brother in the end. The cunt had gotten himself offed by one of the Martells, and with a poisoned blade too if word on the grapevine was to be believed. Sandor wasn’t surprised, not really, not after the atrocities Gregor had committed against that family all those years back. He didn’t think he begrudged them the kill, but the news had left him feeling strangely hollow anyway.

He could still feel the gaping emptiness there in his chest, and the way it ached with the general pointlessness of it all. If it had at any point in the last night been filled up by drink, it was long gone by now.

_Fuck Gregor, and fuck revenge, and fuck life. Fuck everything._

The unusual sensation of gentle fingers against his skin jerked him back to the present, his brother’s sneering face disappearing from his mind, and it was all he could do not to freeze in place as the mystery woman began to trace aimless trails across his chest, shifting closer so that her head was pillowed against the crook of his shoulder. He could feel her hair spilling across his arm – there seemed to be a lot of it, long and ticklish and feather-light.

“Are you awake?” she asked, her voice soft and low, sweet in tone but undeniably sultry in timbre. He could feel her breaths against the side of his chest, warm and slow.

She laughed when he only grunted in response, but she said nothing more after that, seemingly content to lie abed with him until he decided otherwise. In truth, he barely even dared to breathe – he felt like one of those dogs with a butterfly on its nose, and the slightest twitch would send it fluttering away, never to be seen again.

Hesitantly, almost dizzy with the sharp citrus scent of her shampoo in his nose, he pressed his thumb and index finger together, the ends of her hair sliding silky-smooth between the rough digits. Suddenly, he didn’t want the moment to end.

If he didn’t lift his arm from his face, if he didn’t open his eyes to see her, perhaps she wouldn’t have to see him either.

But Sandor had never been a coward, and he refused to start now.

Slowly, trying very hard not to feel like a man condemned to death, he let his left arm fall to his side and looked down, at the head of dark copper hair lying against him, at the spray of brown freckles pattering across one visible shoulder. The sight of her soft peach skin contrasted against his hairy tanned form felt unbelievably surreal – he ran a bewildered gaze down the gentle jut of her hip and the length of her calves, almost pressing up against his legs but not quite.

Not for the first time, he wondered _how _in the seven hells this had happened. He hadn’t even seen her face, and already he knew that she was too good for him.

Clearing his throat, he asked gruffly, “What’s your name?”

The woman laughed again, and then she shifted, propping herself up on one elbow and turning to face him. Her hair gleamed russet in the light, tumbling over her shoulders in glorious, unruly waves. Sandor swallowed and met her gaze, dazzled but refusing to show it – she was leaning against his right side, so it was possible that she hadn’t yet seen the full ruin of his face. She couldn’t have, surely, not if she was still smiling at him like that, with those sky-blue eyes and that amused twist to her pink lips.

“Do you remember _anything _from last night?” she demanded, but she didn’t seem offended in the least.

Slowly, uneasily, Sandor shook his head. He wished she would stop looking at him like that, like he was the sort of man that a pretty girl like her was perfectly happy to wake up next to. He also wished that she would stop pressing her breasts against him, but that was quite another matter altogether.

“I’m Sansa,” she offered, still smiling, although the expression looked a little more abashed now rather than teasing. “I suppose you were rather, well, _drunk_ when we met last night. In fact, I’d be more surprised if you did remember anything.”

“And you do?” He quirked a sardonic half-smile at her, wondering at the sight they must have made, wondering how they had managed to somehow end up safely in his bed if they had both been shit-faced.

She cocked her head at him, like one of those inquisitive little birds that he saw in the parks, eyeing the last crumb of bread as it tumbled through the air. “I don’t drink, actually, so I remember everything just fine,” she said, her voice suddenly going low and mischievous, her finger taking up its aimlessly circular path across his chest once more.

He couldn’t help the utterly gormless look of shock that flitted across his face before settling there, his scars pulling tight for a moment.

“You –” he started, flabbergasted, and then found himself unable to finish.

Sansa let out yet another peal of laughter – he didn’t think his apartment had ever held so much amusement in it at any one time. “You performed very admirably despite your inebriation,” she assured him, leaning down to press a fleeting kiss to his clavicle, as if _that _was what was bothering him.

“No,” he sputtered suddenly, needing to get away from this insanity, this _fever dream_ that he seemed unable to wake up from. “No, this is – you saw _this _and you still – is this some sort of bloody _joke_?” Sitting up with a jerk, he turned the left side of his face to her, letting the pale rays of the sunrise filtering in through his curtains illuminate the craggy mass of discoloured scar tissue. He could feel the familiar anger beginning to rise up in him at the increasingly preposterous sight of the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life lying naked in his bed.

“Sandor,” Sansa said carefully, pushing herself upright as well, completely bare and not even bothering to clutch the fucking sheet to her chest like all the women did in movies.

He just stared at her, unsure what to say or do. His anger pulsed through him, worsening the dull throb in his head, but there wasn’t really anything to be angry _at_. He could hardly shout at Sansa for being touched in the head and allowing an ugly dog like him to fuck her into the mattress. Maybe she _liked_ ugly men – maybe she was one of those women with some sort of saviour complex, or even an inferiority complex.

“Sandor,” she repeated, quietly, and her expression was so earnest it hurt him to look her full in the face. “If you’re worried about the scars, don’t be. It doesn’t matter to me. None of it does.”

He shook his head, shutting his eyes tightly for a moment. “Why?” he growled. “How can it not…matter?”

He opened his eyes when he felt the bed move, and he had to fight the urge to flinch away from this slip of a woman half his size. She had shifted closer, close enough for her knee to rest against the hard muscle of his thigh, close enough for him to reach out and grab her or choke her or whatever other terrible things monsters did to defenceless women like her.

But he had never wanted to be like Gregor.

“Last night, I ended up standing beside you while I was ordering my drink. Non-alcoholic,” she added with a tiny smile. “While I was waiting, you turned to me and asked if I knew how it felt like to want someone dead. You said it didn’t feel as good as you thought it would, to hear that he _was_ dead, because you didn’t get to do it yourself.”

Sandor blinked, brows furrowing, but Sansa continued before he could interrupt with his ballooning disbelief.

“I said – I know what it feels like.” Her smile turned wry, one hand lifting to twirl a copper curl repeatedly around one finger. “My friends were occupied, and you looked…sad. So I stayed, and we talked, and you were kind. And then I went home with you.”

“You came home with me because I was _kind_? Are you _daft_?” He could imagine few other adjectives that described him quite as poorly, and he found that it was in fact possible to be incensed by sheer stupidity.

The look on her face hardened. It was something of a feat, he thought, that she managed to look angry and vulnerable and so terribly sad all at the same time.

“I used to think that people were the same inside and out. I thought that all beautiful people had good hearts.” She paused, and her eyes were ice, thin and breakable under the slightest pressure. “I have confided in the wrong people, and fallen in love with the wrong people, and trusted the wrong people. People I love got hurt because of that, because of _me_.”

She reached out, placing her hand lightly on his arm, her fingers trembling.

“Last night, I met a man who seemed brave and gentle and kind. His heart meant more to me than his scars.” She smiled up at him tremulously, and he saw an immense strength in the terrified, defiant set of her jaw. “Sandor, tell me I made the right decision this time.”

He sighed, a tired exhalation, and took her hand in his.

“You need higher standards, woman,” he said roughly, and he didn’t know what in the seven hells possessed him to lift her hand to his lips, brushing his mouth across the bony bumps of her knuckles in a long-defunct courtly gesture.

Sansa flushed, pink and delighted, all the way down her neck and beyond.

“I don’t know if you made the right decision,” he said at last, grudgingly, “but I suppose you didn’t make a wrong one.”

**Author's Note:**

> I have this perpetual problem of starting out wanting to write smut, and ending up with a fic that does not contain smut in any way, shape or form.


End file.
